Suchergebnisse

Implementing Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERPs) is a complex and costly project which usually delivers only a few of expected benefits. Obtaining the expected benefits of ERPs is impressed by a variety of factors and variables which is related to an organization or project environment. In this paper, the idea of predicting ERP post-implementation benefits based on the organizational profiles and factors has been discussed. Regarding the need to form the expectations of organizations about ERP, an expert system is developed by using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) method to articulate the relationships between some organizational factors and ERP's achieved benefits. The expert system's role is in the preparation to capture the data from the new enterprises wishes to implement ERP and predict likely benefits might be achieved from the system. For this end, factors of organizational profiles (such as industry type, size, structure, and so on) are recognized and a feed-forward architecture and Levenberg-Marquardt (trainlm) neural network model is designed, trained and validated with 171 surveyed data of Middle-East located enterprises experienced ERP. The trained ANN embedded in developed expert system predicts with the average correlation coefficients of 0.745, which is respectively high and proves the idea of dependency of ERP post-implementation benefits on the organizational profiles. Besides, total correct classification rate of 0.701 shows good prediction power which can help firms in predicting ERP benefits before system implementation.

Implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERPs) is a complex and costly process which usually results in serious failures. Numerous factors affect these projects implementation due to their size, complexity and high chance of failure. Therefore, identifying these factors in ERP projects is a critical issue. The majority of previous studies and research projects have been conducted in identifying ERP Critical Success Factors (CSFs) rather than Critical Failure Factors (CFFs). In order to help practitioners, this paper studies the CFFs in this kind of projects. Unfortunately, the implications of interdependency among failure factors are usually underestimated by project managers and decision makers since they are difficult to model and analyze. With this in mind, the authors have built Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) of failure factors in ERP implementation projects. The main advantage of FCM lies in them being capable of modeling complex phenomena based on the experts' perceptions. This tool models uncertainty and related events, imitating human reasoning. Moreover, FCMs enable the developing of forecasting exercises through simulations. Practitioners would thus assess the joint influence of ERP implementation failure factors on project outcomes. The results make known to practitioners which problems will arise if the failure factors are not treated, and how these will impact on the outcomes of projects. Therefore, the tool proposed would help them to manage ERP implementation projects in a more effective and proactive way.

Implementing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems is a complex, lengthy and expensive process which usually faces serious challenges and failures. Thus, it is necessary to perform a readiness assessment at the initial stage of an ERP implementation project to identify weakness areas which may encounter the project with failure. This paper proposes a new framework for assessing readiness of an organization to implement the ERP project on the basis of McKinsey 7S model using confirmatory factor analysis. Through this method, the construct of ERP readiness is proposed based on 7 dimensions namely "structure", "strategy", "systems", "skills", "style/culture", "staff", and "shared values/ superordinate goals". Using the framework, the current situation of the organization can be determined and necessary changes can be made prior to system implementation. The proposed framework is then applied to 2 real Iranian banking cases and the advantages of the framework over available frameworks are illustrated.

The success of a virtual organization (VO) largely depends on the effective collaboration of its members in orchestrating their knowledge, skills, core competences and resources. It enables the VOs to enhance competitive capabilities and respond better to business opportunities. Most previous studies have focused on the influence of some contingent factors on Knowledge Management (KM) process/ outcome and neglect the interacting relationships among these contingent factors. The objective of this study is to explore the interacting patterns among a VO enabling capabilities from a covariation perspective on Knowledge Management Performance (KMP). The authors introduce the concept of "consistency" which helps them investigate the impact of the VO enabling capabilities on KMP. The results from a field survey of 95 Iranian IT/ engineering firms which implement KM processes show that the "consistency" among these enabling capabilities has a significant positive impact on KMP. The novel point in this paper is to consider the following factors in a virtual context simultaneously: focus on core competence, network cooperation, integration, trust in the network, and ICT usage. The results of this study have provided a very useful reference for scholars and managers to identify the relevant issues of KM projects in VOs.

Social network sites (SNSs) such as MySpace, Facebook, and Youtube have attracted millions of users, many of whom have integrated these sites into their daily practices. There are hundreds of SNSs, with various technological affordances, supporting a wide range of interests and practices. However, the impact of SNSs is increasingly pervasive, with activities ranging from economic and marketing to social and educational. Among the wide impacts of social network sites, they are, anecdotally, becoming increasingly important in today's businesses. Thus, the purpose of this study is to present a literature review of and classification scheme for research works in business impacts of SNSs, with the aim of clarifying the ways SNSs impact businesses. The review covers 28 journal articles published from 2000 to 2011 and a few months of 2012. The 28 articles classified SNS applications in businesses into six distinct categories: the "marketing and advertising," "knowledge management," "social capital," "relationship management," "e-commerce," and "economic model." The findings reveal that "marketing and advertising" were the most frequently category has been considered in the literature. This review provides a source for discovering business impacts of social network sites and will help to simulate further interest in the area.

Selecting the appropriate IT outsourcing (ITO) strategy is important for firms in general and banking institutions in particular to achieve expected benefits, but it remains complex, risky and lengthy process for clients to select the appropriate ITO strategy. Previous academic efforts to support ITO decision incorporated a limited number of factors, which is over-simplification of multi-faceted real world problems. In this paper, after doing in-depth literature review for identifying influencing factors on such ITO decisions, a model with an application of Fuzzy TOPSIS based approach is proposed to rank and prioritize the alternatives. Throughout this study, the authors use data from a real banking case to run the model for supporting outsourcing decision for five ATM, POS, tele-banking, mobile, and internet-banking services. The proposed model can help ITO decision makers advance their decision making process, especially where parameters involve uncertainties and hardly can be assessed by human judgment.